The Marquess of Ailesbury obituary: much-married stockbroker
Descendant of Lord Cardigan of Light Brigade fame whose life was a tale of mixed fortunes
Like his mother, Michael Brudenell-Bruce, the 8th Marquess of Ailesbury, fell to his death from a high window.
Hers was on the seventh floor of the Savoy Hotel. His was at his home in Shepherds Bush, west London. The only witness to his fall was a cat.
It was the latest strange twist in a family saga that could be traced back to Lord Cardigan who, as he led the charge of the Light Brigade, declared: “Here goes the last of the Brudenells!”
As it happened, Cardigan beat the odds to survive the infamous “valley of death” debacle at Balaklava, but when he died in 1868, childless, so in effect did the single name. The earldom of Cardigan passed to his distant kinsman George Brudenell-Bruce, 2nd Marquess of Ailesbury.
In 1961, Michael Brudenell-Bruce, the future 8th Marquess, might have taken the title. His grandfather the 6th Marquess having died, and the marquessate passing to his father, Chandos Sydney Cedric Brudenell-Bruce, he chose not to take Cardigan as a courtesy title, or the Bruce earldom of Whorlton in the County of York, keeping instead the junior style by which he had been known since birth: Viscount Savernake
It takes some following, but every earl and then marquess of Ailesbury since 1685 had held the hereditary wardenship of Savernake Forest, southeast of Marlborough in Wiltshire. Moreover, since William the Conqueror made Richard Estormit (later, Esturmy) warden in 1083, the succession of hereditary wardens had never been broken, passing from father to son, or occasionally from an heiress-daughter to son. The Esturmy family lived at nearby Wolf Hall, but in 1427 the line ended with three daughters, one of whom married an ancestor of the Ailesbury family, taking with her the wardenship of Savernake.
To Michael Brudenell-Bruce, the viscountcy of Savernake seemed preferable to the Cardigan earldom, especially after the publication in 1953 of Cecil Woodham Smith’s The Reason Why, which was critical of the commander of the Light Brigade.
Michael Sydney Cedric Brudenell-Bruce was born in 1926 at Tottenham House, the eldest son of the Earl of Cardigan and later 7th Marquess of Ailesbury, and Joan Houlton Salter. His mother, “while of unsound mind”, died when he was 11 after falling from the Savoy Hotel window.
…In 1950 Captain Brudenell-Bruce, now demobilised, became a stockbroker, and two years later married Edwina, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Sir Ernest de Winton Wills, Scots Guards. The marriage was dissolved in 1961. He married, secondly, in 1963, Juliet Adrienne Kingsford, of Marlborough. That marriage was also dissolved, in 1974, the year in which he succeeded to the marquessate. In the same year he married, thirdly, Mrs Caroline Elizabeth Romilly. That marriage was also dissolved, in 1992.
Always a handsome man, Ailesbury was soon attached to Teresa Marshall de Paoli, a former model who had once dated Frank Sinatra…
…he had handed over the hunting horn, the token of wardenship of the [Savernake] forest, to his son and heir, David, who had assumed the style Lord Cardigan in 1974 on the death of his grandfather. The earl, as owner and warden of 4,500 acres, enjoyed mixed fortunes, however. The estate was held in a trust, controlled by the family. In 2013 Cardigan filed a lawsuit against the trustees, alleging mismanagement, but was defeated in the High Court, and the house was sold, together with 800 acres.
In November 2014 the 31st Hereditary Warden of Savernake, who had studied at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, was said to be living with his second wife and baby daughter in an unheated lodge in the grounds of Tottenham House on a £71-a-week jobseeker’s allowance while training to be a lorry driver. He would ultimately benefit from the sale, but was bitter about the loss, believing that he was “put on this earth to take care of Savernake and I will never let it go”.
…His son from his first marriage, the former Earl of Cardigan, who becomes the 9th Marquess, is contesting the will, which was changed two years ago to include Marshall de Paoli. He survives him, together with four daughters: of the first marriage, Lady Sylvia and Lady Carina; and of the second, Lady Louisa and Lady Kathryn.
The Brudenell-Bruce motto, Fuimus, colloquially translated as “We have endured”, had so often seemed apt.
Michael Brudenell-Bruce, 8th Marquess of Ailesbury, 30th Hereditary Warden of Savernake Forest, was born on March 31, 1926. He died after a fall on May 12, 2024, aged 98